


february

by hanjisungsslut



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Artist Lee Minho | Lee Know, Drabble, Driving, Fluff, Guitarist Han Jisung | Han, Happy Ending, Indie Music, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Nighttime, One Shot, Secrets, fake identity, its pure vibes honestly, old cars, vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29554800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanjisungsslut/pseuds/hanjisungsslut
Summary: The longer Minho lives this lie, the longer Jisung gets to be a part of it, and that’s something he isn’t entirely sure he’s willing to let go of just yet.+++A short piece where Jisung and Minho go for a late night drive.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	february

**Author's Note:**

> this is a short little drabble i came up with while listening to February by No Love for the Middle Child on repeat. it’s a good song to listen to while reading this and i really recommend it. as for this one shot, i’m just playing around with word choice here so anyways, i hope you like it!

The engine hums with a loud roar, creating a constant vibration beneath his seat that is nearly as familiar as the driver’s own reflection in the rear view mirror. The radio is turned down to a notch that makes it hardly audible, a distant static noise breaking through every few hundred feet. The car travels at a turtle’s pace, but the reason behind the travel is not to reach a destination, but rather to take a journey without one. It doesn’t make any sense. It makes all the sense in the world. 

The two occupants of the car are just ordinary individuals, none of their qualities particularly unique in the eyes of the universe which beholds them. Their peers may pick up on the supposed oddities of their characters, but their habits and rituals aren’t so odd when the bigger picture is taken into account. They live on a giant, floating rock in space amongst other giant, floating rocks and they believe they are the only beings alive. Talk about an oddity.

The driver of the car is none other than Han Jisung, a freshly eighteen high school senior with nothing but time on his hands and too many thoughts in his brain. The guitar that is slung across the backseat belongs to him, a passion he picked up in his formative years that continues to calm him even when nothing else can. Han Jisung doesn’t have friends, not really, because the only person he would entrust his life to isn’t exactly a friend, though he isn’t exactly more either. They just are, and that’s good enough for the both of them.

The person in question goes by the name Lee Minho. It’s not his real name, Jisung knows that despite Minho’s amazing acting skills and his quick wit. The yellow notebook that rests under the sole of Minho’s foot on the floorboard is his own, the name he fronts so well scribbled across the front in faded sharpie marks. He answers to it, almost as if it was his real name, and his story is so straight that it could pass even a lie detector test. It’s crisp edges and lack of inconsistency is the exact reason Jisung knows it’s all fraudulent, but he’s never spoken a word about it. Whoever Minho is, he’s running and Jisung is not a fool enough to think he is doing anything different.

The digital clock on the dashboard on the car turns over, marking four in the morning as the night sky changes with it. It’s two more hours until dawn, two more hours until they go back to being something instead of nothing. They like nothing. 

The rhythmic clicking of Minho’s lighter brings another element to their trip, the same box held up to the cloth roof of Jisung’s car, burning it everytime it lingers. Minho doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t have the lighter for that reason. He says he likes to burn the tips of his fingers on it occasionally, as a stress relief. Jisung thinks he’s full of shit and the four canisters of gasoline he keeps full in his back shed tell a different story, but he won’t be the one to rip the first hole in Minho’s perfect lie.

The longer Minho lives this lie, the longer Jisung gets to be a part of it, and that’s something he isn’t entirely sure he’s willing to let go of just yet. 

The sun roof is pulled back, revealing the dazzling night sky before them, though Jisung doesn’t look at the stars above him. Instead, his eyes find the star in the passenger’s seat beside him, because Minho is an enigma in every way he can be, because he knows so much about him and yet absolutely nothing at all. Every word from Minho’s mouth is to be taken as a lie, but Jisung deems himself a master at picking about the truths in every one and for now, that’s all that counts.

“It’s like you want me to ask you about it.” Minho speaks slowly with a monotone voice, like he usually does when he is unsure about something, “If you’re trying to entice me, you’ll have to do better than just looking at me.”

His words refer to the gash on Jisung’s right cheek, a nasty cut that is the result of one too many taunting sneers to the wrong person. It’s been ignored from the moment they entered the car four hours ago until now, and of course it was Minho who acknowledged it. Minho, who doesn’t let Jisung get away with anything. Minho, who Jisung likes better than anyone he’s ever met because of it. 

“Nobody’s trying to entice you.” Jisung says with a light chuckle, hands flexing around the steering wheel and knuckles cracking in harmony, “If you wanted to know, you would ask. I’m simply looking at you because I want to.”

Minho pokes a finger into his right cheek, careful to avoid the still freshly bleeding wound. A drop or two makes it to his finger, but he wipes it on his pants without so much as a raised eyebrow. He doesn’t ask, he doesn’t need to know.

To Jisung, Minho is a question without an answer, he’s a puzzle with several missing pieces that cannot be recovered. Minho is, at times, charismatic and pleasant, and at other times, temperamental and judging. He becomes whatever he needs to be, depending on where he is and who he is with. So, Jisung knew the only way to truly know who Minho was, without the fake adjustments and the master list of identities, was to expect nothing. When he needs nothing, is no one going nowhere, Minho becomes another identity; his own. 

To Minho, Jisung is everything he hates and everything he loves at the same time. Even the world’s best lying expert wouldn’t be able to deceive Jisung, there’s something about him that is able to tell, like a sixth sense that only he has. Minho spent weeks finding every little hole within his lie and sealing it over with another lie, only for Jisung to spot the cracks in the wall immediately. His questions are calculated and his knowledge is less than comforting, but every time he seems like he’s just about to cross the invisible line between them, he backs away without a word. Minho stands just on the other side of that line, only he isn’t Minho at all on the other side, he’s just a blank page who fills his empty space with pretty words that mean nothing to him, but are essential for his lies. Lying is not a hobby or an impulse, not anymore. It’s a means of survival. 

Just as the dirt road they travel begins to bore them both, Jisung turns the car onto the interstate ramp and begins their adventure all over again. Minho’s always late to his ideas, to the way Jisung’s mind works. Every time he thinks he’s got him pinned down, can anticipate what he’ll say or do next, Jisung goes off script and throws an entirely new situation at him. It’s thrilling, and terrifying.

Minho’s fast. He’s a runner in more ways than one, the quickest to ever finish the mile on the high school track team he joined this year. When he’s questioned, he tells them about his daily runs every morning, how he never leaves his house without sprinting two miles. It’s another lie Jisung sees through, because he picks Minho up from school these days and he knows there isn’t an ounce of moisture from either a run or a shower on Minho’s body. He’s also fast in the way he runs _away_ , a packed bag sitting in his bedroom at all times by the window he will leave through when the time is right. He can become a ghost within an hour. 

Usually, he doesn’t stay in one town for as long as he has this one. Something grounds him here, something pulls on him like an anchor latched onto his foot, keeping him frozen in his place. He has a good feeling as to what it is.

“You might need to get gas soon if you don’t plan on this little adventure ending.” He turns over in his reclined seat, the seat belt digging into his neck in a way most unpleasant, “You’ve been riding empty for a while now.”

“When it runs out, I’ll just refill it with one of the cans in the back.” Jisung rests his head against the cold glass of the window, his warm breath making it fall into a cycle of fog and fade. 

“The cans you stole from me.” The seat belt releases and Minho pulls the notebook from underneath his shoe. It doesn’t have anything incriminating or overly personal in it, but he keeps it very near and dear to his heart regardless. There’s a few sketches he isn’t exactly enthusiastic about other people potentially seeing, but it wouldn’t be the end of him if they did. He has a tendency to document people, particularly ones he’ll miss when he inevitably becomes a shadow on the crosswalk and nothing more, memorizing their faces while he knows them and drawing them to the exact detail.

He always names the drawings with the name they know him by, the person they knew as their friend. 

Eight months have passed by and there’s about twenty “Minho” entries. They’re all the same face.

He writes the page number in the corner, page twenty eight, and steals a pencil from Jisung’s glovebox. With his body turned away from the younger boy, he begins to mimic the lines of his nose, the feature he always starts with. He finds the most trouble in Jisung’s eyes, unable to properly capture his emotions within strokes of a pencil. His other drawings can look like emotionless robots, but it doesn’t feel right on Jisung. The emotion is an essential part of him. 

“Jisung?” He calls his attention to watch the light in his eyes ignite, to watch them burn brighter than any star within the sky. It’s a look he can watch endlessly, until time itself ceases to exist. “Tell me about your favorite things.”

A look of confusion passes through the younger’s face, but he stops his questioning when he sees the soft smile on Minho’s face. At this moment, he decides that it doesn’t matter, none of it does. Minho’s real name doesn’t change who he is. Whatever he keeps locked away in that notebook is none of his business, and neither is the reason behind why Minho is such a quick runner or why he keeps cans of gasoline in his shed and a lighter in his hands at all times or even why everything he owns fits in a single bag that he keeps next to a window. What Minho doesn’t tell him doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t change who looks at him right now. 

“The feeling I get when I play my guitar. It’s like every note relieves some of the pressure, like it explains it and allows it to exit my body through my fingertips. I don’t like talking to people, but music allows me to talk without saying anything.” He presses down on the gas a little harder, the car jolting forward at the increase in speed. “Driving. Not so much driving somewhere, but more of like what we’re doing now. Just going without somewhere to be.”

His pause screams contemplation and Minho allows him his privacy to his thoughts. His eyes are brighter than anything he’s ever seen before, a gorgeous mural of excitement and candid words. 

“There’s also this feeling I get when I’m around a certain person.” Jisung doesn’t seem embarrassed by his honesty, and Minho knows it’s because of how well they know each other. He knows it has everything to do with how they seem to communicate without expression. “Being around them is like coming in from a winter storm and having a blanket wrapped around you. It’s like going all or nothing down a straight highway with nothing in your way.”

“Like running. Without detour, without stopping. Running without a place to be or a need to stop and catch your breath.” Minho finishes for him, a slow and more genuine smile making its way into his face. That spark is still gleaming in Jisung’s eyes and Minho can’t look away. He wants to memorize every part of it, every glimmer and sparkle and emotion that seeps through. He doesn’t want to miss a single thing.

“Like February?” Jisung whispers, more of an inquiry than a statement.

“Yeah. Like February.”

Minho stares at Jisung for the longest of time, his every freckle sketched deep in the blank page. He wants to know everything. He already does. 

When dawn breaks and night turns into day, the car stops. It’s a Saturday morning and they sit on the side of the road as the sun breaches over the horizon in complete silence. Only the moon gets to see who nobody is. When the sun is out, they are different.

As dawn breaks, Han Jisung goes back to being an eighteen year old guitarist in a pop punk band started by him and a few guys he knows in a garage. Lee Minho goes back to being a liar, a lonesome man with one foot out the door and one eye looking over his shoulder at every corner. It makes all the sense in the world. 

Minho finishes his sketch just as he greets the sun. The same sun who knows him to be a runner, who knows he will never stop and will always run without detour, without stopping to catch his breath. The same sun who knows Jisung to be a driver, who speeds down a straight highway with nothing in his way. 

He tucks the sketch close to his heart and breathes in the smell of a fresh February morning, his packed bag sitting in the trunk, untouched.

Maybe the next time he runs, he’ll take February with him. 

**Author's Note:**

> I know I can't make you stay  
> Everything is temporary  
> I'm not usually afraid  
> It's not the distance that's what scares me  
> Didn't we come all this way  
> Not to let it just get weary  
> "All along" is what we say  
> Before the baggage gets too heavy


End file.
